Transcription of Resilient Life #192

Speaker 1: You’re listening to Love Maine Radio with Dr. Lisa Belisle, recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture, and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her integrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine. Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See the Love Maine Radio Facebook page or www.lovemaineradio.com for details.

Now here are a few highlights from this week’s program.

Jim: Anything can be achieved. There are ways to overcome any hurdle today in life. I just look around the world. Things are terrible in many parts of this world, and we don’t have it that bad here, folks. We really don’t, we’ve got it really made. We need to talk to our youth to make sure that they’re in a developmental stage to carry on with the community spirit that we have today.

Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, Show Number 192, Resilient Life, airing for the first time on Sunday, May 17, 2015.

We never know what silent battles those among us might be engaged in. Local businessman Jim Godbout faced a series of losses, physical, emotional, and social as a child. Through self-care and healing techniques like acupuncture, yoga, and healthy eating, Jim has created a full and happy life, rising above problems like epilepsy, encephalitis, and the loss of his twin brother at the age of five. Jim embodies the quality of resilience to which most of us aspire. Thank you for joining us.

One of my favorite things about Love Maine Radio is the opportunity to spend time with friends of mine who I have known previously. Today, I’m going to introduce you to Jim Godbout, who owns Jim Godbout Plumbing in Biddeford. Jim was diagnosed with encephalitis at a young age and developed a seizure disorder. The condition is made worse by stress, so for his own wellbeing, Jim created a healthy and regimented lifestyle, which includes daily meditation, yoga, exercise, and healthy eating as well as regular acupuncture, chiropractic, and massage treatments. Jim lives in Saco with his wife and he has one grown son.

Jim, it’s really great to have you in the studio today.

Jim: Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: I love this story because you are one of these people, and we have quite a fair number in Maine, that isn’t exactly what he appears on the surface. You’re the successful owner of Jim Godbout Plumbing. Thank you, by the way, for doing the plumbing on our house.

Jim: [Crosstalk 00:03:11].

Lisa: You’ve done a great job. Every time we’ve ever needed to call you, even in an emergency, you’re always there. I know why you’re successful from a business standpoint, but I would never have thought about this other side of you.

Jim: I think they go hand in hand, to tell you the truth. We love servicing our customers because we love people, and it’s kept us successful for a long time, thirty-plus years. The other side of that, it’s very stressful to run a plumbing and heating business from the financial side to the demands of our customers, because they’re usually calling in a panic. We have to calm them and get out there and take care of their plumbing, heating, and air conditioning needs. Very early on, I figured out that we need to control stress in order to be successful in business and in life, because you can’t bring that home and you’ll ruin your family life. I’ve adopted many alternatives to traditional healthcare in order to do that.

Lisa: Tell me about this encephalitis. Tell me about that original story.

Jim: Okay. The encephalitis was brought on from a scary disease that people think nothing of. It was developed when I got mono at a very young age; I think I was maybe a freshman or so in high school. The mono didn’t get treated right away because the symptoms were not to a point where it had to be … Didn’t think there was anything wrong other than normal school-age problems. The encephalitis developed, which was a swelling of the brain, causing some brain damage and later a seizure disorder, which at first we had severe grand mal seizures and petit mal seizures causing me not to be able to drive, difficulty working once we even got medication controlled.

School was definitely not an option, so my scholastic career was high school, but it was developed with a program called cooperative education, so I went to one class a day and went to work. I thus started my working career at a very young age, probably attributed to a medical condition from the mono, encephalitis, and seizures. I felt that at the time, we needed to do something different with my education because I was a little bit combative at the age, with the sicknesses that I was having, so working seemed to be my outlet at the time.

Lisa: There are so many things as a family doctor that I’m sitting here thinking about. One of them is you’re absolutely right. When I have patients who come in and who have mono, and I see this all the time, I think you’re the first person who’s actually presented in front of me that had this encephalitis as a result. It’s something we learn about in medical school, but it’s very rare. What did that feel like to be the one case of this happening that you knew of and go from being a freshman in high school, normal life, to this thing that shouldn’t have impacted you so much?

Jim: Yeah. I was fortunate enough to have a very good neurological team that … I shouldn’t say that. First off was my pediatrician at that time, Dr. Connor Moore, which was well-known in the area and still is today.

Lisa: He’s been on the radio show.

Jim: He’s a special person and a good friend of mine, and I thoroughly enjoy his company as of today. Dr. Connor Moore directed me to some neurologists in the Portland, Maine, area who were very aggressive in trying to find out what was wrong. I did go through some pretty extensive tests that would be considered primitive today, but they did figure out that there was some issues with my brain causing the … They thought it definitely was caused from the mono. They did figure out the mono, then encephalitis. The treatment of that seizure disorder, though, there was no real brain surgery at the time or anything to treat that, so it was medication, some aggressive medication that caused all kinds of side effects for me for many, many years.

I thank God that we had good physicians in Maine, which we still do today. I think we have some of the best healthcare around. I can attribute Dr. Connor Moore for really getting me on the right track to where I am today.

Lisa: Yeah. Those seizure medications, I have patients who have to be on them long term, and you’re right, they impact you in small ways and big ways. Your liver metabolizes them and sometimes they can cause liver problems. Also, they can make you feel sleepy or a little out of it. As a teenager trying to deal with those, it’s sort of a balance because you don’t have seizures, because those impact you in a bad way, but also the medication itself was really tough.

Jim: Yeah, absolutely. The early medications were Dilantin at the time, which the sleepiness was a huge factor. You couldn’t function like you’d want to be functioning. You had all this energy, but your body was just drained down. Also, an awful side effect is your gums grow over your teeth. Talk about an awful procedure to go through as a young person, to have your periodontist take the gums away from you, just an awful thing. Then later on, they brought us into a drug called Tegretol, which you felt loopy. I’m surprised they even let me drive back then, to tell you the truth, but I was able to function, work, and I always remained a positive attitude in life.

My family was broken up at a young age. I had a twin brother who passed away of leukemia at five. Family broke apart early. I had some younger siblings, two of them that live still in Saco, Maine, with me. Kind of took them under my wing, we cared for them, with my mom being a single parent at the time, so it was a lot of pressure on me to make sure that the family succeeded, and I was nothing but going to succeed no matter what my health challenges might have been.

Lisa: Are you the oldest in your family?

Jim: I am the oldest, yes.

Lisa: You were not only taking responsibility for yourself and for your younger brothers and sisters, but also helping your mom, who was a single parent.

Jim: Correct. I was pretty much a breadwinner at a very young age, and that’s why the co-op program actually helped out with keeping the family financially stable at that time. That’s when I learned to cook, too, because I had to be the chef in the house at that time, so I learned at a young age how to cook with very little and make something very nice.

Lisa: I think about also as a teenager … We already know, having had three teenagers myself, we already know that there’s just a lot going on. There’s a lot going on socially, a lot going on emotionally and physically, and add on top of that the brain issues that you’re describing. I don’t know what those were for you, but often I know people have issues with anger, judgment, impaired judgment. For you to be doing all of those things you just described for your family but also dealing with stuff that you can’t really help that’s happening inside your head.

Jim: Yeah. It was extremely difficult. I don’t know a better term for it, but it was motor issues that I had. Reading was difficulty, reading words and actually absorbing them. I would have some petit mal seizures which would cause a lot of fluttering in the eyes, so I’d have difficulty concentrating, especially school was very, very hard. The seizures were a real challenge, but I got to say this, I think they brought character to me and learned to overcome pretty much any obstacle.

As you said earlier, life has so many … Everybody is in warp speed today with their lifestyles, and I take a deep breath and sit back and go, “Not worth it, folks.” Put the phones away. Enjoy your family, take a deep breath. Enjoy a meal and conversation together. It brings so much to you, brings so much life to you. If that’s not there for you, go give to your community, because that’s another portion that I do. I’m a huge Rotarian, which our group is always supporting our young and old and needy in our community. It brings so much nourishment to my body to do that for our community.

Lisa: We’ve talked about the neurologists that you worked with, the neurologic team that you had. We’ve talked about Dr. Moore, the pediatrician that you had. At some point, though, you began to integrate other things personally into your regimen, and a lot of them. I’m impressed that … How old are you now, Jim?

Jim: I’m fifty-three this year.

Lisa: Fifty-three. I don’t know that many fifty-three-year-olds that have daily medication, yoga, exercise, healthy eating, regular acupuncture, chiropractic, and massage treatments all in their regular lives. That is an enormous commitment. Tell me how you started becoming interested in these things.

Jim: Yeah. I have to say some of it was brought on by my networking in business, you meet so many people. Over the years, I’ve always recognized chiropractic being the care. My uncle was a chiropractor, so I had chiropractic care at a very young age. I had clients who were acupuncturists, which I just was blown away. She could barely speak English. She’s a young lady, and I couldn’t even tell you her age. She looks young to me, but she may be older, a young Chinese lady in Kennebunk. She started acupuncture on me many years ago, and I just could not believe the value of it.

My body from taking all the medications over the years has developed issues with my liver, issues with disc degeneration, the medication. I have severe back and neck issues with degeneration. The only way I can keep up the lifestyle that I’m leading … I love to be active, golfing and walking with my wife and my dog and enjoying life physically. … is to have the chiropractic care, the massage therapy, and the acupuncture therapy, which over the last ten or fifteen years has been a routine. Every month I have to have … It’s every other week or so, and my wife is great at organizing that for me, so I commend Lynn for doing that. She does a great job at it.

A year ago, I had some severe back issues where the nerve was impinged upon … My leg would not shake, my pain was incredible. I had to have surgery; there was no other way around it, but the doctor said, the neurosurgeon here in Portland, a fantastic guy, said, “Jim, you’re in fantastic shape. You’re flexible, you have severe degeneration of your disc, of your neck and your back, but if you take care of yourself …” He says, “We’re not going to fuse your back. You have four disc … We’re not going to fuse you. We’re going to take care of the one disc, get you back on your regimented routine. You’re in fantastic shape, you’re not overweight. You’re my prodigy. I love seeing people like you because you’re going to make me look good,” and I have. It’s really worked.

Had the surgery, back on my feet in no time. Continue with the chiropractic care from a good friend of mine in Biddeford on a monthly basis, sometimes more often, depending how much I beat myself up. The acupuncturist is a sweetheart of a friend in Biddeford as well, Lisa Bouchard, who does a great job of dealing with specific aches and pains I may have. She can target those areas. I’m just blown away at that type of medicine. If nobody’s ever experienced that, they really need to open their eyes to it, because you don’t need to take pills to cure everything. Other than some blood pressure medication, probably business-related issues, I don’t take aspirin on a daily basis for pain or any other pain medication. We could all learn from these alternative methods.

Lisa: What about your healthy eating? You told me that you learned how to cook at a young age and that became important to you over time. Tell me what types of things you try to do to stay in a balanced way.

Jim: Again, it goes back to our clients that we have. Done work for many, many restaurants over the years and developed relationships with chefs and farmers locally. My wife and I have eaten healthy probably since we were married. It’s incredible, actually. Everything is fresh, fresh vegetables, fresh meats, lots of fish. We’re big fish eaters, and what a great place to be in southern Maine here to have great fish and produce. I love trying different things, so it could be … Last night’s dinner was a baked haddock with kale and broccoli rabe stir-fry. That’s our staple of the evening. Then tonight, maybe another protein with vegetables. Where there’s fresh market, we go for it. I enjoy trying different things and we have fun and conversation during the meal, which is really important for me for releasing stress for the whole day, the cooking and the conversation at the end of the day.

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Lisa: You mentioned walking, you walk your dog. You mentioned golf. Tell me about what other things you like to do from an exercise standpoint.

Jim: Yeah. I think walking is probably my favorite, especially when you’re walking with your wife or your dog. I go out in the morning about 4:30, quarter of five, with the dog. This morning it was seventeen below zero, and she and I just had a fantastic time on the beach watching the sea smoke coming up. You talk about starting your day on the right foot with a dog that’s wagging, yellow Labrador, just wagging the tail, you swear to God she’s smiling at you. It just brings so much to you, it really does. Then you look at the ocean, how clean and free spirit that is, with the sea smoke coming up and you go, “Nothing is that important to be upset about during the day.” It’s just a great start to the day.

My wife and I will walk every evening together with great conversation, get the heart beating a little bit and chat about the day and enjoy the company of our dog. She’s very special. Obviously, my son is grown now, so we have another child in the house, a little three-year-old Lab. She’s my best friend, she’s awesome. My wife and I enjoy her company constantly.

I try to make time every week to say, “All right, Jim, we’re not going to work seventy, eighty hours a week,” which is not uncommon for me to do. Especially my wife will remind me, “Jim, you got to go golfing.” Who ever heard of a wife saying go golfing? It’s a good stress relief, so on a Wednesday night or a Saturday morning I’ll go out and go for a nice casual walk and have great conversation and don’t get stressed about the game because it’s just a game. I enjoy the walk and the exercise and usually play pretty good golf, so fun.

Lisa: Now a good attitude is important to you, and that’s pretty clear to anyone who’s listening. Was there a time that you realized that that was going to be the case? Was there some turning point where one day you just said, “I know I have all this stuff I’m dealing with, but I have to have a good attitude.” Was there something that caused that to happen?

Jim: You know what, Lisa, I’d probably go back to a pretty young age where I realized that. Our family’s been a little unfortunate, having a lot of death in our family, people who were close to us, and I recognize that death is part of living. There was a time where I actually needed some mental health treatment at a very young age, where my grandfather had passed, who was basically my father figure. Very tight with him, and he taught me an awful lot about the trades and about people. He was old school, World War II veteran, special person in my life.

I got upset and angry and depressed a bit. Had a bit of a turning point there, finally woke up one day and said , “Know what? This life is too short to be caring this way and to move on.” Had many close friends die over the years, including my dad, who died about seven years ago. The one thing I’ve always done since then is … I said, “I’m never going to get down and out or depressed or anything like that. I’m going to spend every minute I can with that person when they’re alive and enjoy their company and listen to them, and I’m going to carry their thoughts with me forever.”

I don’t get as down on a person dying, knowing that it’s part of life and that remembering them in a good manner is perfect. I have to say that was probably the turning point, having a bunch of death at one time in my life. I said, “It’s time to be upbeat all the time because life is very short.”

Lisa: It was your brother you mentioned, your twin brother-

Jim: My twin brother.

Lisa: … who died of leukemia when you were five.

Jim: Five, correct.

Lisa: That’s old enough probably to have some memories of him, to have bonded with him.

Jim: Absolutely. I have some visual memories of him. He had a few other ailments at the same time. He had a club foot, so I always remember a cast on him. If you can believe it, he was a little darker complexion that I was, too, so we were always paired together and you could tell who was Johnny and who was Jimmy. My son, Jon, was actually named after my twin as well and part of that. We were identical, of course. Something that was found out later in life, too, is twins have a unique bond.

I had some issues with a physician and the doctor thinking I had some issues with my thyroids, and they were checking things out and all of a sudden went and had a sonogram done and found out I only had half a thyroid, or one side was a thyroid. Never had surgery or anything. My brother, John, they believe had the other one. It’s some uniqueness and a bond that we have even today. It was thirty, forty years after he had passed. I have a connection still with him. The doctors said, wow, he had the other. Never had to have medication for it or anything, so it was kind of unique.

I still remember him to this day. His smile was probably something I still carry today, because I love to smile, as you can see, I enjoy it. He died at Children’s Hospital at the age of five. Back during that time, leukemia was not a really disease that was treatable at the time. They treated it somewhat, but it really wasn’t curable. Being an identical twin, I had to go through numerous tests such as bone marrow and such. Those were horrific back then, so I still remember that as well.

Lisa: All of these tragedies contributed to your parents breaking up. You grew up in Saco?

Jim: In Saco, yeah.

Lisa: In Saco.

Jim: Yeah.

Lisa: I would think that back then, during the time that you were growing up in that part of Maine, parents breaking up, that was probably somewhat unusual.

Jim: It was unusual at the time. Thank God we had some support from some great aunts and my grandfather, which lived nearby, so we did have some support at that time. My dad was French Canadian; he was born in Canada. He went back to Canada and hooked up with somebody there for awhile, then came back to the States later, remarried. I think my mom and dad did have a [communical 00:22:22] relationship later on. They weren’t battling forever. I think during the death of my brother probably brought about a lot of that. It’s turmoil for anybody, in any family. My father and I did reconcile many years later, even though I still had an awful feeling from what he had done to us, but I look at it as maybe he helped build the character that I am today by forcing me to do things at a very young age and be a strong person and create the networking that I did about thinking everybody is a good person.

Lisa: When did you reconcile with him? When did you get back together with him? How old were you?

Jim: I would say it would be thirty-plus years ago we reconciled together. It was difficult at first, but it was typical of a divorced parent at the time, at that time, where he may show up once a month or whatever and take the three boys out to bowling or something of that nature, so it wasn’t really a relationship of any kind. He never went to any of our athletic activities or scholastic activities. We really didn’t see much of him, but I recognize, again, he’s my dad, he’s my blood, and we had to make up.

Later in life … Like I said, he passed away several years ago. We connected again and he had an awful disease called mesothelioma. He was a truck driver. I cared for him before he passed. It was my wife and I’s twenty-fifth anniversary, so we said goodbye before we went on a trip away. It’s a horrible disease that my grandfather passed away of as well. They called it lung cancer at the time, but he worked in the shipyard, so … Caring for him during that time, we reconciled and said our goodbyes. It was a good way to leave, part ways.

Lisa: I’m sitting here thinking about my own family, because my father’s side of the family grew up in Biddeford. My father’s mother passed away when, I think, he was thirteen or fourteen, also French Canadian. I don’t know what your family’s working background was, but his family worked in the mills. Everybody lived right around the mills. When his mother passed away and he had, I believe, three younger siblings, the aunts, the great aunts, the grandparents, the extended family came in and they helped out. It seems like that’s similar to what you’re describing, that it’s not just the mother and the father take care of the kids. There’s something going on, we’re all going to step in and we’re going to help out.

Jim: They all step in, and that’s a heritage thing. That’s a story you should really think about telling some time because the French Canadians are a unique people. My father was one of ten, and his aunts are all still … My aunts, his sisters, are all still locally. Matter of fact, we just had them over for Christmas, and they’re the best people. They’re so giving, they’re so loving. They moved down from Quebec; most of them were a very young age. I think they had one pair of shoes between the ten kids. Again, the father worked in the mills. They brought up some tremendous families. To this day, they’re the most loving, giving people you’d ever meet. If there is a problem, they’re there supporting them. I have an uncle who’s sick right now. I can honestly say all my aunts are there probably daily bringing him food and caring for him and just nurturing him until his passing days.

Lisa: This is something that it seems like for you it’s not just been about the community of your family but the community. You were talking about Rotary, so you’re obviously thinking of everybody as your family, the people that work with you, the people that are in Rotary with you. Why are these community connections so important?

Jim: They are so important to me. It gives me so much joy to take care of people. Maybe that’s my French Canadian background. I have so much joy taking care of people. I have so many stories I could tell about going out in the community. We have local relationships with police departments and fire departments and code enforcement officers, and they know what I’m like, so they’ll phone me and it may be in Kennebunk or Biddeford or Saco. I can tell you of a gentleman last year that it just broke my heart.

It was a man eighty-six or eighty-seven years of age, had a trailer park, in Saco he’s living. The police had notified me that he had been without water for several days, the pipes had froze. He had no money. We went in and took care of this gentleman, a World War II veteran, had some nice stories to tell me. I really admire those people. He had no money. I look out in the driveway, he’s driving a 1986 Ford Explorer. As we were leaving, he wanted to pay us. He’s got the title to this 1986 Ford Explorer he wants to hand off to us. I had tears in my eyes, and I said, “No, Mr. Vaillencourt, angels are taking care of you. This is on the angels in your area.”

You can’t believe how much joy that brings to myself, and I try to instill those values to my employees and to everybody around me. If we all give a little something, it makes this place a better place to live.

Lisa: I’ve noticed that … We’ve had people from your company, and I know they’re from your company because they wear your name on their outfits. They’ve been doing work on our house, and I’ve noticed this, that they genuinely want to connect, that they genuinely care about the work that they’re doing, that they’re out there making sure that the jobsite is clean. Maybe everybody does this, but I’ve had some experiences where that’s not true. There’s some pride, there’s some desire to be known for, I don’t know, for good work, for the relationships.

Jim: Professionalism.

Lisa: Yeah.

Jim: Our trade needed professionalism. That’s part of why I got involved with this trade was I saw a lack of it at an early age. I think it’s come a long way. We try to be leaders in that in regards to being educated in what we do and carry a level of professionalism and communicate with our customers, because that’s something that’s been a difficult thing in all the trades, whether it be construction or electrical or such. If you communicate with your customers, it means so much. We try to instill those values with my employees to make sure they’re communicating, talking to me and the customer, and make sure they’re getting the best service possible. It’s really worked for us. We’ve created a huge network over the years, and we’ve never really advertised other than taking care of the Maine Magazine. I have a relationship thing with them, but we rely on the people that we’ve worked with before.

Lisa: You haven’t had a seizure for thirty-five years?

Jim: Since I was thirty-five, so about-

Lisa: Since you were thirty-five.

Jim: Yeah. About eighteen years.

Lisa: Eighteen years.

Jim: Yeah.

Lisa: Was there something that happened at that point? Was there some reason? Was there some magical pill that you took or some magical thing that you did? What was the circumstance there?

Jim: No. I can’t give an answer for that, whether I just outgrew the seizure disorder. There was a neurologist that suggested that I get off the medication, which I did. I got off the Tegretol and the Dilantin. I kept my normal lifestyle. I’ll have a glass of wine a day or a beer, just a moderate amount of alcohol. Seemed to dissipate all seizure activity, even petit mal seizures. Sometimes you get a little fluttering in the eye and think, “Oh, God, are they coming back?” No, it may be just an age thing. There’s a lot of different things that go on.

There was no spark or no stoplight that came on and said, all right, you’re all done. It just transpired. We got off the medication, and it was scary at first, thinking, “Oh, God, I’m going to have grand mal seizures.” Maybe the fact that my lifestyle changes were taking place about that same time, I was eating well, exercising. Maybe the combination of all these little elements just about the same time I started doing a lot of these alternative health things, so maybe that was the turning point.

Lisa: That’s actually the answer I wanted you to give, so I’m sort of glad you came up with that. I’m also thinking for such a long time we thought about brain damage and even physical body damage as being permanent and irreversible, but what we’ve started to learn is that neurons can regenerate and that there is a plasticity to the brain specifically and even to nerves in the body that enables them to heal. What I’m wondering is with time and with all of these things that you’ve done to keep your body healthy, increase your ability to deal with stress, is that your brain somehow was able to heal itself.

Jim: I totally believe that. It may not be totally attributed to brain neurons coming back, but what made me think of this is the back injury I had where I had severe nerve damage in my left leg. My wife and I called it chicken leg, because I had a lot of atrophy there. Those two nerves that were dead in my leg have come back, which is truly amazing. It took about a couple-of-year period, but through exercise and biking and good nutrition, I have almost gained full mobility of my leg again, which is truly amazing. Now, thinking about how that works, I said it’s got to be something similar in the brain as well, because I can function, highly functional I think. Running a business and organizational piece of the business is very challenging and takes a lot of mental skills. I don’t feel like I’ve had any deterrent at all from the encephalitis and seizure disorder that I had previously.

Lisa: What I don’t hear you saying in any of this is, “I needed to get rid of the stress in my life.” There wasn’t really a way you could do that anyway, and there isn’t really a way that most of us can do this. What you said instead was, “I know that I have stress in my life. I want to be able to take care of people and take care of myself, so how can I do that? How can I deal with my stress?” That’s really what you’ve done. You haven’t pushed the world away. You brought the world in, but you strengthened yourself.

Jim: Strengthen yourself, stress management I’ll call it. It’s not about eliminating, because we can’t eliminate it. We live in a very fast lifestyle, especially here in southern Maine. If you look in other parts of the country … I go visit friends or talk to people around the country. We’re very fast-paced here in southern Maine, and people have high expectations for us, so stress isn’t … We’re not going to get rid of that. How do we deal with it? My way of dealing with it is using the alternatives, which are some exercise, eating well, giving back to my community, socializing. I think people have become introverted, become a little bit angry over time, so I think you need to socialize. Giving back is probably one of the best things that relieves some stress for me. Whether it’s a local school or an elderly man who needed some help or through my Rotary Club, which touches people throughout the world, actually.

Lisa: How did you get involved with Rotary?

Jim: Good friend of mine brought me in a number of years ago, ten-plus years ago, Roland Eon. He’s a fantastic friend and has had some challenges himself over time. Rotary has been a big part of his life and I recognized that and he asked me to join. If people don’t know what Rotary does, they really should reach out to somebody who is a Rotarian because we do so much for our communities and for the whole world, from almost eradicating polio, if you look at what we do internationally, to sending crutches to Africa, to buying jackets and socks and mittens for kids locally here and doing a dictionary project. Most kids have never had a dictionary in their life, we give them to the third grades every year in local schools. Bringing Christmas and Thanksgiving to their homes that may not have food on the table. Rotarians are special people and whenever you see that pin on somebody, shake their hand because they’re a good person.

Lisa: As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.

Marci: When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing, from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up? I know that during the course of my days, I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe, but when I do, I feel energized because in those moments, I’m able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow. Sometimes those are the aha moments. If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we’re doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can, in fact, come true.

I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need, boothmaine.com.

Speaker 1: This segment of Love Maine Radio is brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage, it’s your move. Learn more at rheritage.com.

Lisa: Now speaking of good people, I’m wondering about your wife, Lynn, and how you met.

Jim: She lived on the other side of the bridge. I grew up in Saco, so it was interesting. She and I met actually at a dancehall in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, called the White Hall. Maybe it was 1981, I think, or ’82, something like that. We were married in 1983 and we have a great relationship. She taught school for twenty-five-plus years and decided to get away from the teaching to … It was getting a little bit stressful for her, very stressful, because the environment changed, the methods have changed, and it just wasn’t a good fit for her, so she decided out of it.

She is very active. She’s at the Y for three or four hours a day, which is one of the communities, the organizations I support wholeheartedly, great thing. She’s at the Y many hours with lots of people socializing, young and old. She’s out with our dog. She brings some mental health to me that I need at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. She copes with the long hours and the stress that I sometimes bring home, but we seem to work through it. She’s a special person, and she’s been my wife for thirty-plus years now, thirty-two years now. We have a wonderful son, Jonathan, that has done remarkable things in his lifestyle, and I attribute my wife, Lynn, and how we brought that young fellow up.

Lisa: Tell me about some of those remarkable things.

Jim: Jonathan went to Biddeford High School, graduated very high in his class. Went to Colby College here in Waterville, Maine. He was recruited there. He graduated on the Dean’s List; he was Dean’s List every year. He was recruited by IBM in his senior year and went to work for them down in Washington, D.C., at a very young age, right after graduation, working in the Pentagon, rubbing elbows with all the politicians. I always say, “Jon, make sure you don’t catch that bug down there. You can work with them, just don’t catch the bug of politics.”

He has gone up the ladder remarkably, actually. Married a young girl from Venezuela, and they have a home now in Cincinnati and they kind of do remote relationships back and forth. She’s getting her PhD in psychology, so two very smart people, two young people. We’re excited that someday maybe have grandkids with them. That would be fantastic. We taught Jon at a very young age. He worked with our company, great work ethics. He obviously had his mother’s brains because he did very well in college and excelled. He’s got my work ethic and her brains and he’s gone over the top now with IBM. It’s a great company. He’s an economics major, so he’s doing a lot of business management stuff for IBM on the government side. We’re very proud of him.

Lisa: I suspect that probably he has some of your brains, too. Although I don’t want to take anything away from Lynn, but I suspect he probably has your brains, too. Do you ever wish that you had been able to go on to college? Is that something that you would have wanted to do if you weren’t dealing with so much as a high schooler?

Jim: I do. I wish I would have had the opportunity to go to further education. It would have helped me with the business world that I’m in right now, because I have to rely on reaching out and taking classes or reading or listening. I’m a really good listener, and I listen to everybody and anybody and I take that information back with me. I go to international shows and national shows about business and plumbing, heating, air conditioning. I grasp all that information that I can from anybody I can and bring that back home and try to instill that into my business, into my lifestyle. I wish I would have had the opportunity to get a better education, but it just wasn’t there, so I got to learn how to work.

Lisa: It is an education. It may not be a formal education, but what you’ve done is very … You are very educated in a very practical and important way.

Jim: Yeah.

Lisa: What I’m wondering about is we are less and less focused on the trades in schools. When I was going through, there was, I believe, a much stronger vocational element to education so that if people wanted to, they could … There was a large number of people who could go on and learn the trades. I hope that there’s a resurgence in that, but I think for awhile it’s been under-emphasized.

Jim: It’s been severely under-emphasized. If you look at the average age of … We have twenty employees in my company, and we’re around fifty years median age. That’s pretty scary when you think about it. We go every year and talk to the local vocational schools and the local high schools and the guidance departments. We’ve done this for fifteen or twenty years we’ve been talking to them. They seem to have been pushing those children away, or if you were a bad boy, you were going to be in the trades. That’s just the wrong approach. You can have an extremely good lifestyle in the trades.

What’s happened is that now we’ve got a real shortage of mechanics, whether it be electrical or plumbing or welding. Machine trades are huge, too. I have some friends that own machine shops. They’re going into the high schools and they’re recruiting kids now, teaching them at a very young age and putting them on their payrolls basically as soon as they can out of high school. We’ve gone and reached out. It does require a lot of training today to be in the trades, and business is one to start with. We’re not finding a lot of young people that want to get involved. Everybody wants the shortcut. They want the easy money or they want …

You’ve got to work hard in this field and you will be successful. There’s been a big push nationally now, and even locally I’m hearing more about it, to bring the trades back to a forefront. I’m in hopes that it comes quick because there’s people retiring at a very, very, very fast rate here in the state of Maine. Trades are something you’re always going to need. You’re always going to need services such as air conditioning and heating and plumbing. That never goes away. As electronic as we get in this world, those are services you’ve got to be able to utilize your hands to make operational.

Lisa: There’s something very … I don’t know, when I fix something at my house, it’s very satisfying.

Jim: It’s rewarding.

Lisa: I’m not terribly well-trained in these things, but it’s kind of like when a patient would come in and have a laceration that I would need to suture. You come in with some cut and I fix that cut. Something so satisfying about that. There is some aspect of the trades that I think that people would find appealing.

Jim: I personally do because if you can fix something, it’s a twofold, because you’re going to get that piece of equipment running or toilet or whatever it might be or faucet is dripping and you’ve stopped it, you’ve made somebody happy on the other side, too, so you’ve done two things. To me, it’s very rewarding. I have a motto. My guys, sometimes they’ll get upset about it, but we do a lot of unique jobs and my saying is, “If it was easy, everybody’d do it. If it’s hard, we’re going to do it because we’re willing to try anything.” We enjoy the challenge and it’s rewarding to make the repair.

We did one yesterday in sub-zero wind chill factors that most companies would have walked away from. I took a couple of my guys and made some networker calls to various people within various trades in the city and things, and we pulled off a miracle yesterday afternoon. I got home, I was filthy and dirty and all those good things and cold, but I had a good feeling inside because we repaired something that most people would not be able to do.

Lisa: I think there’s something about the technological age, the media age, that is almost inviting people back to this hands-on element.

Jim: It’s so gratifying to work. I admire those people. I read a story about the farmers locally. It was maybe in the Sunday paper or something. To have an education and then to do farming, they get the best of both worlds right there, they really do. They’re going to be successful in whatever they do. It’s so rewarding to work with your hands. They’re very fortunate. Boatbuilding, too. Talk about standing back and looking at what you finished afterwards, that is pretty impressive. Finish carpenters, there’s a trade right there, too. I know a gentleman in Biddeford who builds staircases. There’s some work there that you just … It’s stuff they did with their hands turn of the century ago, which you haven’t seen that many times. I just admire them that they can build something. They take a long time. They’ve got a lot of patience to do it, but when you stand back and you look at what they’ve done with their hands, it’s just truly remarkable.

Lisa: I do think that there is a Maine history to that. We think of all of our, yours and mine, our relatives who worked in the mills and all of the people who can say exactly the same thing here in the state of Maine, people who are foresters or farmers or lobster people. I should call them lobstermen. Lobster people just sounds weird, but the lobstering industry. There always has been an element of hands-on, and I like that it’s going back to that again.

Jim: Yeah. I do, too. I think it’s fantastic. Maine ingenuity is definitely a word that I would use, because I think of all the different things from lobstermen to lobster people, they have to adapt to certain situations very quickly. If it’s a broken hose on the boat when they’re at sea and how do we fix this quickly. Is it jamming a wooden plug in there until we can get back to shore without drowning? Or is it the carpenter on a job who’s run out of nails and needs to figure a way to make something adapt. People in Maine find a way to adapt to the harshest things, and this winter is probably one of the tests as well. There are some people that have adapted to some very harsh conditions this year. We’re survivors. We’re real survivors here in the state and we find ways to work around all the difficult situations.

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Lisa: What do you see in your future? You seem like a person who lives very much in the present, but I assume that … You’re also a planner, I can tell that. You’re an organizer, you’re a business owner. What is it that you would like to see happen? What are some of your hopes?

Jim: Okay. I don’t really have a exit strategy, because I do look at today.

Lisa: You mean exit in life or exit in business?

Jim: Exit in business.

Lisa: Okay, good.

Jim: Life I’m here for awhile, I hope. I really haven’t thought about an exit in the business world. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy the people I meet. I hope I can do this for another twenty years, as long as my health stays as well as it is right now. I hope to do that. I hope to spend more time with my wife, taking time off, not working quite as much as I do and enjoying the little things that we enjoy. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy. It’s just the simple things in life, whether it be going to dinner at one of the finest restaurants in Portland, because we have many of them, to just taking a drive down the coast to see some of the wonderful architecture or stopping by and meeting people.

People mean the most to me, I think, so I really … I don’t want to stop what I’m doing. I enjoy it. I am living today, at the present. I’m getting ready to do my Rotary auction right now. It’s exciting for me because we’re going to generate fifty thousand dollars that we can give back to our community. We’re also reaching out to all the business people around and they’re giving back, so that’s a good feeling.

I see myself as continuing to be a huge community supporter. I don’t know about internationally; I think I’m going to be more locally because I see a lot of need locally, so I’m always focused more locally. I see myself as not developing any type of retirement strategy that many people think they need to do. My total vested interest is in my business and the people that work for me. I have a lovely home on the beaches that we’ve worked very hard for with mortgage like everybody else does. We don’t live a very fancy lifestyle. We just enjoy life and giving back.

Lisa: Jim, what thoughts do you have for the next generation, for people like your son who are out there in the world?

Jim: I think they have a very difficult road ahead of them. One of the things that I have tried to battle for many years here, and it’s a topic that nobody wants to talk about, is the amount of drugs that are at an abusive level in this country. I think there’s a small percentage of … We’ll call them millennials, because that’s the name they get. Small percentage of those who are going to have enormous challenges taking care of the next generation of drug use and alcohol abuse, I’m going to say, which leads to other issues. Our country needs to get a real grasp on that, because it’s going to be a very small percentage.

We have a large group of people that are getting to an age where they’re going to require medical care at an alarming rate because we’re living much longer. This group has twofold. They’ve got less people paying taxes, less money to support the people that are retired or need medical care. They have a drug issue with how do we maintain some sort of social atmosphere that can be productive in our country. I really think they’ve got some huge, huge hurdles. I hope they’re starting to recognize that and I hope that us, as a group of business and community leaders, will assist them in that and give them some guidance and push this and not allow this to overtake our country.

I hate to say this, but I really think our country is getting weaker by the year; it’s not getting stronger. Our strongest people were probably born and raised in the forties and fifties during the post-war condition and worked through World War II. We’d learn a lot by listening to that elder group which is slowly dying away, unfortunately. The hardships that they endured, none of us have seen. Those are hardened people that really, really could live on nothing. I think this new generation of millennials have had everything given to them. They haven’t had to work for it. There’s only going to be a small percentage of them; they’re going to have to work really hard to keep this country on track.

Lisa: It’s an interesting point you bring up about drug use. I can say as a physician in Maine for quite a number of years and having worked in the correctional system as a doctor and also having worked in some of the poorer sections of the state, I think there is more of a problem than we recognize. I think it’s more pervasive than we know. It’s people who are just … They’re not the people you would expect. They’re your neighbors, they’re your friends. I think that there is a sense of something so difficult to deal with that you have to use either prescription or non-prescription drugs to deal with it. I think you’re probably right.

Jim: It’s enormous. Ask anybody you meet, do you know somebody, a relative or whatever? It has touched the lives of about everybody. If you know somebody who works in the emergency room or they work in a medical care facility or they drive an ambulance for a local fire department, it is scary some of the stories you’d hear. These are people that … They’re non-functioning in our society, unfortunately, for the most part or they’re going to become more non-functioning in our society. We cannot continue this track of having more non-functioning people in our society.

We need a collaborative community that can work together as a whole. The more people that we have to support, the fewer … It just doesn’t make great economics. It’s just not going to work. If more people would take the approach I have, less drug use … A lot of times drug use is attributed to pain. They may have started small and grown. In my own high school class, I can honestly say there was a tremendous amount of people that went to stronger and stronger drugs over time, from alcohol to things that they could not get away from, and then later on death.

Lisa: Yeah, it’s interesting that you would say that. Having also graduated from a high school in Maine and actually having … It feels like somewhere around my age, things come home to roost and things start to happen and people do eventually, their bodies just give out from some of these things. It just happens. I also know about you that despite your concern for the next generation, you’ve somehow managed to pull things together in your own life and somehow managed to defy the odds, I guess. Do you think it’s possible that this next generation will be able to do exactly what you’ve done in your own life?

Jim: Absolutely I think they can. I think it’s just a matter of us all communicating to that generation and showing that anything can be achieved. There are ways to overcome any hurdle today in life. I just look around the world. Things are terrible in many parts of this world, and we don’t have it that bad here, folks. We really don’t; we’ve got it really made. We need to talk to our youth to make sure that they’re in a developmental stage to carry on with the community spirit that we have today.

Lisa: Personally, I like learning from the people that … I like learning from my own children. I like learning from the younger people that I work with, and I like the value that they also have to offer having grown up in an entirely different age. I love the fact that it’s not just us talking to them, but it’s also us listening to them and collaborating. I think that we can create a stronger community if we all value each other for what we have to bring to the table.

Jim: Yeah, I would agree with that. As I said early on, we need to listen to ourselves and debate openly and not argue, because I think debating is a lost art for the most part today. I think talking back and forth and leaving the mind open on both sides is very important today.

Lisa: Jim, I may be about to make your life a little bit more stressful because I’m sure after listening to this interview, people are going to want to hire you to come work on their property. I certainly know we couldn’t have done our work without you at our house. How can people find out about Jim Godbout Plumbing in Biddeford?

Jim: We have a website, jimgodbout.com, which has been around for a long time, since the web actually was introduced. That’s an interesting story, too, because I learned how to use a computer … I got ill at a young age with pleurisy and then I got pneumonia, so I was down for the count for about a month or so and I taught myself how to use a computer at a very young age. Thus, the website came and we’ve educated our customers with the website and we continue to use that. We’re changing it all the time. They can reach out to us there, dropping us a line with any questions. We’re always willing to help whether you’re near or far. We have a network all over the United States of good people in our trades and good people in communities that can help anybody, so it’s not always about just locally. It may be somebody in northern Maine or in Canada or in western United State somewhere. We’re there to help all.

Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Jim Godbout, who owns Jim Godbout Plumbing in Biddeford. It’s really been a pleasure to spend time with you today and thank you so much for all the work that you’re doing.

Jim: Great. Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio, Show Number 192, Resilient Life. Our guest today was Jim Godbout. For more information on Jim, please read the June issue of Maine Magazine. For more information on all of our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and see my running, travel, food, and wellness photos as Bountiful 1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week.

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Resilient Life show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms, and Bangor Savings Bank. Love Maine Radio is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Susan Grisanti, Kevin Thomas, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our content producer is Kelly Clinton. Our online producer is Andrew Cantillo. Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See www.lovemaineradio.com or the Love Maine Radio Facebook page for details.